1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid jetting apparatus which is provided with a liquid jetting head having nozzles for jetting a liquid, and particularly to a liquid jetting apparatus which reciprocates the liquid jetting head in the vertical direction to move the nozzles in a vertical direction.
2. Description of the Related Art
An “ink-jet printer” has been widely known as a conventional “liquid jetting apparatus”, and an example thereof has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,399,070 B2 (corresponding to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-262816). An ink-jet printer (1) of U.S. Pat. No. 7,399,070 B2 includes an ink-jet head (30) having nozzles which jet an ink, a head holder (9) which also serves as a carriage, an endless belt (11) which reciprocates the head holder (9) in a horizontal direction, ink tanks 5a, 5b, 5c, and 5d (hereinafter, “ink tanks 5a to 5d”) which accommodate the ink to be jetted from the nozzles, and tubes 14a, 14b, 14c, and 14d (hereinafter, “tubes 14a to 14d”) which supply the ink in the ink tanks 5a to 5d, to the nozzles. The ink jet printer (1) adopts a “tube supply method” of supplying the ink in the ink tanks 5a to 5d via the tubes 14a to 14d. Therefore, it is possible to make the ink tanks 5a to 5d large, and to prolong an ink replenishment cycle. Accordingly, it is possible to ease a troublesome task of ink replenishment. However, since the ink-jet head (30) is reciprocated in the horizontal direction, an installation area of the ink-jet printer in the “horizontal direction” becomes substantial, and an installation site is constrained remarkably, which has been a problem.
As a means for solving such problem, a “vertical” ink-jet printer (100) has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-298082. In the vertical ink-jet printer (100), a carriage (151) is reciprocated in the vertical direction by installing a carriage guide shaft (156) to be extended in the vertical direction, and accordingly, a recording head (152) is moved in the vertical direction.
The reference numerals in brackets correspond to reference numerals used in U.S. Pat. No. 7,399,070 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-298082.
According to the ink-jet printer (100) in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-298082, by narrowing the installation area in the “horizontal direction”, it is possible to reduce the constraints on the installation site. However, a positional relationship of nozzles of the recording head (152) and a liquid level in an ink container has not been taken into consideration.